Helicon Focus a new feature of CS4

[johnastovall]

A review of CS4's Helicon Focus feature.

Helicon Focus – a review by Mark Dubovoy. Goodnight Dr. Scheimflug, wherever you are

[Jake]

Sweet! Looks like it works pretty well, I may have to try that.

[jeffkohn]

?

The review has nothing to do with CS4 or its focus-blending feature. Helicon Focus is a standalone product (and quite expensive at that).

General consensus is that CS4's own focus-blending tool sucks bigtime.

[venchka]

Jeff,

Where does Tufuse Pro fall in this area relative to CS4 and Helicon Focus? At $35 it seems like a bargain. If it works.

[jeffkohn]

Wayne,

To be honest I haven't really done any testing with Tufuse's focus stacking. I don't think it has any capability to handle artifacts such as ghosting. Also, it won't handle frame alignment in the case where the exact FOV of a lens changes as you change the focus (which includes most modern lenses).

My experience overall with focus-stacking has been that the technology still has a long way to go. It works OK for fairly simple cases, but seems to fail when you have distinct planes of focus rather than a continuous transition. (For instance, foreground tree sticking up in front of distant mountains). I tried CS4's focus stacking, as well as a demo of an earlier version of Helicon Focus, and the results weren't good enough for me to pursue it at the time. Maybe the new version of Helicon Focus is better, I don't know.

For those who want to experiment with focus stacking without buying an expensive piece of software, you might want to check out CombineZ, which is free.

[venchka]

Thanks Jeff. You've saved me some money and earned a cold brewski!

Looks like the old tilt/swing method is still best.